January 4, 2013

I discovered that as a result of having looked up the word "news" in the Oxford English Dictionary and run across this sentence in Richard Burton's 1621 book "Anatomy of Melancholy": "As a horse in a mill, a dog in a wheele, they run around without alteration or newes." I could picture working horses harnessed to a mill, trudging around in a circle, but what was the corresponding situation for a dog?

The reason I was looking up the word "news" was that it was the last word in today's Gatsby sentence, and Meade, reading what I wrote, asserted that "news" was a word that dated back to the early days of movie newsreels and was an acronym for "north, east, west, south." No way, I said, dashing into the OED for confirmation. The idea of the pluralizing the word for "new" to mean news, is quite old, much older than English:

Spec. use of plural of new n., after Middle French nouvelles (see novel n.), or classical Latin nova new things, in post-classical Latin also news (from late 13th cent. in British sources), use as noun of neuter plural of novus new (compare classical Latin rēs nova (feminine singular) a new development, a fresh turn of events).

If you Google "horse powered boats" you'll come up with quite a few hits. And there were certainly many 19th century farm machines powered by horses walking on treadmills (with a power take-off, of course).

A horse can provide more power than a dog, and I'll bet the output/feed ratio is also better.

But I'm sure dog power works a whole lot better inside one's home.

Now, a flying machine powered by a million or so mosquitos would be interesting.

I'm with Meade. "News" was the the first word that caught my eye too (even if it was the last word in the chosen sentence). This was much the same in the example you chose the other day where my eye and mind went straight to "station wagon". It's probably a guy thing.

"Albert, what the hell are you talking about? Look, let's not argue - say the family's fine, say the family's perfect.

"Let's talk about you for a minute. Look what you've done. You failed! That's what you did, you shmuck, you failed!

"You started out with this artsy-craftsy reality crap and what did you end up with? The news! The goddamned NEWS!

"People get that for free! You think somebody's gonna hire a babysitter, take a taxicab, go all the way the hell downtown, walk to the box office, shell out four bucks, and say, 'Here, here - here's my four dollars. What time does the news go on?'"

Even if Meade said it, it was pretty pissy to blog that fact. Just think of what he could blog. People should always present their beloved in the best light. That's the kind of thing that people from Generation Juicebox fall for--like saying "saved by the bell" comes from the Victorian practice of people being buried with a string tied to their finger, attached to a bell, in case of narcolepsy, misdiagnosis, or other reason for being buried alive.

And in the case of bells, I don't care what any expert says about the subject (I never looked). Since bells--at least in small form--have been around for thousands of years, and we know that bells were often used to warn of danger because they can be heard for a greater distance than shouting alone, it is impossible to believe that someone HADN'T been saved by a bell before Victorian times (and the casket bell thingie), and to believe that expression had NOT made its way into common use.

Why not do the same with people by having an exercise bike or treadmill that generates electricity?

Oh, it's been done, lots. Google "human powered machines." Some designed to provide small amounts of electricity cheaply in Third World countries, many others to make some incidental use of First World gym nuts' exercise.

My husband has an electric-assisted bicycle that operates more or less like a hybrid car, in that much of the energy involved in braking goes towards recharging the battery. Not only does it make for extremely effective braking on steep descents, but you have more battery left at the bottom of the hill than you did at the top. The same goes for pedaling without the assist on, or with the braking/resistance turned on (which you can also do, if you want a harder workout).

Amazing that Wikipedia's article on the Turnspit Dog missed that such dogs are mentioned several times under another name by Shakespeare. Most memorably, in Comedy of Errors 3.2, Dromio of Syracuse is mistaken for his identical twin by the latter's fat greasy kitchen-wench girlfriend who is far too affectionate for his comfort. After a whole list of complaints, comparing her to a globe with various ethnic jokes for her various parts (where are her "nether lands"? "oh sir, I did not look so low"), he concludes:

"And I think if my breast had not been made of faith, and my heart of steel, / She had transform'd me to a curtal dog, and made me turn i'th'wheel."

A curtal dog was one that had had its tail cut off so it could run round and round in an enclosed wheel like a hamster, providing the power to turn the spit on a roasting pig or other animal, without getting its tail caught in the spokes. I imagine the wheel was placed so a stupid dog would think that if he could just run fast enough he could get to the roasting animal and take a bite, like a horse encouraged to pull a carriage by a carrot dangled in front of his nose.

Etymologically, 'curtail' means 'shortened', and its frequent use in describing dogs and horses whose tails had been docked made it turn into Modern English 'curtail', as if it referred specifically to tails (etymologically, I mean).

Horace uses the Latin equivalent (curtus) in a nasty dig at 'foreshortened' (i.e. circumcised) Jews. Dromio's fear of being turned into a curtal dog looks like castration anxiety.

watch hindi movies onlinelove your post and very interesting topiclove the way everything was explained by the author book marking this page to come read more of this authors post lovely very nice topic engjoyed reading